The fault · clicking, beeping, grinding
The clicking you hear is not data being erased; at least, it is not yet. It is the heads of a hard drive losing their bearings and starting over. Each time the heads move to start over again, they continue to slide across the surfaces of the disks (platters) where your files are stored. Take the power away from the hard drive and the heads will no longer be able to slide across the platter. If you stop early enough, anywhere in Exeter, the odds of recovery remain firmly in your favour.
Talk it over with an engineer
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| The error | What it usually means | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythmic clicking, one to three beats a second | The heads can't read the servo marks they follow in order to determine their location. Therefore, the heads will park and try again, and repeat this process forever | Shut down the system right away. |
| A faint, high-pitched beep — usually a 2.5" portable | If the motor is unable to rotate (the bearing has become jammed or if the disk head(s) have become attached to the platter and will not release), the disk cannot be accessed. | Do not physically manipulate or shock the unit. |
| A grinding, scraping noise | There is a head/disk crash in progress; there is contact between the read/write heads and the disk surface. | Each additional second of time with power being applied eats into your data. |
| Musical chirps during spin-up | Failing calibration, often after a hit or other form of shock. | Just turn it off, and walk away from it. |
| Bursts of clicks with silences between | The drive will repeatedly reset itself each time it has run through a string of failed retries. | Turn off the power in the middle of the loop |
| Clicks only when certain files open | A single weak head, or damage to just one band on the platter | Cancel the copy operation; create an image instead |
Your device will be logged under its own case number on the day it comes into our lab. The engineer who works on your device identifies the problem with it, clearly states what we think has a good chance of coming back and provides you with one fixed quote. There are no charges for this assessment; there is no obligation for you to do anything; and paid work does not begin until you authorise us to start.
None of the drives here receive power until their mechanical components and surfaces have been checked for damage. If a clicker must run, we will allow it to run for seconds at a time while being monitored by us, and we will never leave it alone to loop.
The failed head stack is replaced with a matched donor. The spindle is then unlocked and the head is removed from the platter where it has stuck. The drive has to be able to read one full image. That is all.
A hardware imager creates a copy of the disk at its own gentle pace, avoiding any weak sectors first and leaving them as the last ones to get copied, so when there is finally a healthy copy of the disk that can hold everything, that copy is where the file system can be recreated.
You have access to a complete list of every item recovered from your device, which you approve prior to any fees being applied. The files will be returned via new media (brand new) with the return postage paid by us, and the case remains open for as long as it takes to confirm that all the files open properly on your own machine.
The whole reason 'off' is the right way to go (for this particular situation) is because the read/write heads are just a couple of nanometres away from the disk surface, with zero room for error once something is wrong. Across all of our clicking-drive cases, the biggest single indicator of whether or not a recovery will be successful is simply how fast the power was cut after that first click.
Five years' worth of EPOS records were stored on a disk which arrived with approximately one tick every second. We needed two donor head assemblies, and one slow, very careful image, before the accountant was able to get their hands on the entire ledger, thus allowing the shop to meet its VAT deadline.
Typically, yes. The clicking occurs because the heads can no longer read, not because there is nothing on the platters. Most of the time, with matched donor heads installed and an image scan done at a slow pace, the majority of the data is recovered intact. It is running the hard drive on, not the click itself, which causes the damage.
No. It dates from a much older type of hard drive. Freezing causes two problems for your hard drive. The first is added moisture due to condensation. The second is contraction of the metal parts in the mechanism. When this happens you get additional corrosion and harm on top of whatever was already wrong.
That 'click' is the head(s) "sweeping" or searching for the factory-installed servo tracks, missing, then falling back to the ramp to try again. Snapped heads, failing pre-amps and scored platters all click in the same way, and it is diagnosis that lets us know which one of these three is at fault.
No. The software has to go through the heads as well, and when they fail, each time you run a scan on your drive, it will be demanding precisely the reads required to kill the drive completely.
Every time a failing hardware component is powered back up, there is additional lost data. First open a case with us: the inspection (look over) is always at no cost, whichever way it goes.